Tag Archives: Google Plus

Although this is a saturated space, with many products, some highly recommended, I thought this idea might interest those involved in the Digital Asset Management space. Based on the maturity of existing products, and cost, it’s up to you, build or buy. The following may provide an opportunity for augmenting existing Google products, and overlaying a custom solution.

Google products can be integrated across their suite of solutions and may produce a cloud based, secure, Digital Asset Management, DAM solution. In this use case, the digital assets are Media (e.g. videos, still images)

A Google DAM may be created by leveraging existing features of Google Plus, Google Drive, YouTube, and other Google products, as well as building / extending additional functionality, e.g. Google Plus API, to create a DAM solution. An over arching custom framework weaves these products together to act as the DAM.

Google Digital Asset Management (New)

A dashboard for Digital Asset Management should be created, which articulates, at a glance, where project media assets are in their life cycle, e.g. ingestion, transcoding, editing media, adding meta data, inclusion / editing of closed captions, workflow approvals, etc.

Creation and maintenance of project asset folder structure within storage such as Google Drive for active projects as well as Google Cloud Storage for archived content. Ingested content to arrive in the project folders.

Google Drive ingestion of assets may occur through an automated process, such as a drop folder within an FTP site. The folder may be polled every N seconds by the Google DAM orchestration, or other 3rd party orchestration product, and ingested into Google Drive. The ingested files are placed into a project folder designated by the accompanying XML meta file.

The version control of assets, implemented by Google Drive and the DAM to facilitate collaboration and approval.

Distribution and publishing media to designated people and locations, such as to social media channels, may be automatically triggered by DAM orchestration polling Google Drive custom meta data changes. On demand publishing is also achievable through the DAM.

Archiving project assets to custom locations, such as Google Cloud solution, may be triggered by a project meta data status modification, or on demand through the DAM.

Assets may be spawned into other assets, such as clips. Derived child assets are correlated with the master, or parent asset within the DAM asset meta data to trace back to origin. Eliminates redundancy of asset, enabling users to easily find related files and reuse all or a portion of the asset.

Google Docs

Documents required to accompany each media project, such as production guidelines, may go through several iterations before they are complete. Many of the components of a document may be static. Google Docs may incorporate ‘Document Assembly’ technology for automation of document construction.

Google’s YouTube

Editing media either using default YouTube functionality, or using third party software, e.g. Adobe suite

Enable caption creation and editing may use YouTube or third party software.

The addition & modification of meta data according to the corporate taxonomy may be added or modified through [custom] YouTube fields, or directly through the Google DAM Db where the project data resides.

Google’s Google Plus +

G+ project page may be used for project and asset collaboration

Project team members may subscribe to the project page to receive notifications on changes, such as new sub clips

G + UI may trigger actions, such as ingestion e.g. by specifying a specific Google Drive link, and a configured workflow.

Google Custom Search

Allows for the search of assets within a project, within all projects within a silo of business, and across entire organization of assets.

Ability to find and share DAM motion pictures, still images, and text assets with individuals, groups, project teams in or outside the organization. Google Plus to facilitate sharing.

Asset meta data will e.g. describe how the assets may be used for distribution, digital distribution rights. Users and groups are implemented within G+, control of asset distribution may be implemented in Google Plus, and/or custom Google Search.

Google Plus mobile should have the stylistic capabilities of Instagram to apply to their mobile photos, on Android, for example. At this point, you cannot apply the styles to photos as you can on Facebook / Instagram, and post photos to Google Plus.

Single Sign On, is the new paradigm of the Internet Portal. Prior to this, the single sign on, like Facebook, or the others was used only as a convenience to users to login to other sites without the hastle of registering for another site. Google Plus takes it to a level where this single sign on can be used to customize content, a custom portal based on historical usage, floating the most frequent, and/or the last used sites. In addition, the Google Plus SSO can allow users to recommend, G+ sites, or specific content within a site and pass those recommendations onto other users, and even Google Plus Hangouts may be created based on users on the same sites concurrently, if SSO can detect the active session. Google Plus Hangouts can be created dynamically , and ask the user if they want to join other usersalready looking at site N, with the site content in one corner of the Hangout.

Last night I was driving my daughter and her guy friend home from an after school program, and I really like this kid, he’s a little tech geek like me. I spoke to this computer savvy twelve year old kid, and was asking him all these questions from a kid’s perspective about all these new technologies. He was articulating and rattling off thought provoking and meaningful information. It was like I was talking to an industry analyst, bright fun, good kid. He and I talked non-stop, and after we dropped him off, and I realized we monopolized the conversation, and my daughter might have wanted to get in a word, so I apologized. Forgot what it was like to be teen, a girl no less.

Anyway, in the mist of our discussion the kid said he uses a gmail account instead of his default ISP. I asked him about what he thought of Google Plus. He said he did some exploring of it. “Yeah, Google + was created to compete with Facebook, but it’s not really that great.” I asked him if he knew about a few features I thought were cool, and his response was “No, not really, Instagram,” he said “was ‘killin it’ though.” We went onto more market analysis of the space. I was amazed. Kids.

It was then I realized why the kid didn’t get past the first page. Appeal and usability. These are concepts in User Interface design and are essential in attracting users. These types of features are usually added later on. The standard technology mantra, is “Make it work, then make it work [faster, refine UI, etc]. If I was trying to really be unbiased, Google Plus is tantamount to a Beta product. As an example, the “Your Circle” buttons truncate the Circle name, are square shaped, and don’t have an appeal. In fact, many of the user interface features feel canned. The user interface is not the focus initially when putting out a product, especially when you are in a rapid mode of delivering, and are certain your product may change drastically, i.e. based on your road map, user feedback, and so on. Although I really like the baseline platform, and am trying not to be, I am a bit biased in favor of Google. Google Plus looks like they are using the Agile methodology with Scrum Sprints and constant releases. To be clear, I am using their own, Google’s latest browser Chrome, on Windows 7 with a powerful computer.

So, what does this teach us? Well, in Project Management, sometimes you can add all the resources in the world to a project, but at some point you get diminishing returns, and there is a limit to delivery capability even using Agile and Scrum methodologies, especially if Social Networking is high on Google’s agenda. Agile requires user feedback, hence the release, and user response cyclical feedback loop.

Anyone can see that a user may Sign into Google Plus, and a user may create a page, and that page, can have a ‘Hangout’, however, this loosely termed virtual place may be used for video interaction, chat, voice, and they even have plug ins to add applications, such as third party interfaces, share screens, all for free. I am able to see a time when Google Plus enables people to have paid ‘hangouts’, or arenas, where let’s say you wanted to earn continuing education credits to keep up a certification, such as earning Professional Development Units (PDUs), which a certified Project Management Professional (PMP)® is required to earn to maintain their certification. As an accredited on line educator, I may be able, some time in the future, to create a Google Plus Page, which is an introduction to my credentials, and then, using Google Wallet, I can pay for a course, which entitles me to either a pre-recorded certification session, or a live session, and both may have tiered pricing, and the live interaction with the educator may require more money. In addition to this, if there are shared screens, and a user may ‘take over’ another computer, an independent computer technician, anywhere in the world, may offer their paid services as well. Any continuing education, for semi retired professors, to mechanics to music or math tutors, sky is the limit. The better accreditation may attract more clients, as well as ratings, pricing, and of course, you, in the future, may be able to advertise your services either through Google Search, Google Plus pages, and so on. Hat’s off to you Google. Still waiting for that job offer. 🙂 I am presuming that either the [software/hardware] platform has not been built out yet, and / or components have not been integrated. Again, my compliments to the New York Times for the thought provoking article, The Year of the MOOC

I really like the spinning red wheel, especially when it gets to 99+, but when you select ‘View Notifications’, you get this droned list of notifications, there has to be some way, in this case to accentuate some of the notifications, maybe +1, are another color than some you’ve commented on. There is so much information, that a classification, or a taxonomy would be helpful. Even some of the comments I’ve put on someone’s Post, I am not interested in being notified if someone adds additional comments, so maybe, a ‘don’t notify’ on a particular post, does that exist, in truth, haven’t checked. Anyway, it seems like all tweet notifications, or DMs can be easily differentiated, but all tweet notifications as well as Google Plus, or FB notifications seem to be treated equal, it’s NOISE, and we will drown in notifications and start to ignore them, and let some of the good ones pass us by. I would say an API that allows you to filter notifications by key words, and then that central program can handle your notifications. If there is an API for notifications, which we know Twitter has, not sure about Google Plus, but there has got to be a 3rd party tool already out there that does this Simple rules engine. Get the noise out of your notifications and filter and/or prioritize the tweets and Google Plus notifications to want to see first. It looks like Google Plus did some color alternations between alternate types of notifications, but its not as intuitive as it could be.

I would also like to see the Android Operating System and the Apple iOS expand out their icons to include variation of the application notification. I don’t think this is available with the 4.01 Android OS, variants of the tweet icon, e.g., still awaiting my update from Samsung for my S3. 🙁